Monday, April 17, 2006

Galloway: 'I’m always telling Muslims never to get involved in the debate about the Holocaust'

George Galloway is a name now familiar even to many Americans after the left-wing British Member of Parliament pwn3d a Senate committee enquiring into his involvement over the Iraqi oil-for-food program last year. Over in Britain, we're more weary of his antics, which have stretched from saluting Saddam Hussein for his 'courage and indefatigability', to unseating a popular Labour MP in Bethnal Green under the banner of the Respect Party in the 2005 British General Election, to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother earlier this year and crawling round the floor pretending to be a cat.

After that particular embarrassment, his latest stunt, however, has many cheering him on again. For years, the British Sunday tabloid has been employing the services of an undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood, who is most famous for posing as a rich Middle Eastern sheikh and catching out a collection of celebrities (including England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson), royalty (Sophie Wessex, Princess Michael of Kent) and professional criminals. The 'fake sheikh', as Mahmood is known, has claimed more scalps than any other undercover reporter in Britain.

Unfortunately for Mahmood, he has now met his match in Galloway. On March 31, Galloway announced that Mahmood and an accomplice had "sought to implicate me in what would be illegal political funding and sought my agreement to anti-Semitic views, including Holocaust denial"..

The reason that this story has bubbled up again is because the News of the World sought an injunction preventing Galloway from publishing a photo of Mahmood on his website, claiming that this would place his life in danger from criminals he has exposed; a High Court judge, however, ruled that all that was endangered was the 'fake sheikh's livelihood.

The facts are these: two men posing as businessmen approached him to discuss matters relating to the British Muslim community, one of Galloway's strongest bedrocks of support in his Bethnal Green constituency. According to Galloway, they offered to 'sponsor' Members of Parliament, an offer he claims to have refused, saying 'absolutely not, it's completely illegal'.

As Galloway's statement indicates, the most controversial aspect of the meeting is where we at Holocaust Controversies take an interest. Galloway claims that his discussion partners

then made offensive statements about Jewish people and invited me to agree with them. For example, when I said the Daily Express was the worst pro-war, anti-Muslim paper in the land they asked, "Because it's owned by a Jew?""No," I said, "Because it’s owned by a pro-war anti-Muslim pornographer."

Galloway is here referring to Richard Desmond, owner of the Express Group, who built his fortune selling adult magazines. Then came the crunch:

More seriously, they then moved on to doubt the Holocaust. "You're not allowed even to quibble about the numbers," said Fernando, "Not even to say it might have been 5 million..."I weighed in, “People should never go down that road….David Irving isn't quibbling about the numbers…in his heart he supports the Holocaust… I’m always telling Muslims never to get involved in that debate. The Holocaust is the greatest crime in human history and it should be accepted as such."

When one of the most prominent pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel leftwing politicians in Britain says don't go there, then you have to conclude that he knows what he's talking about. Not only does Galloway's statement undermine the efforts of the Muslim Parliament to create a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians, it also calls into question the sanity of Revisionists eager to ally with President Ahmadinejad of Iran - ironically, another Mahmoud...